Graphics

A dispute about paint colors has turned neighbor against neighbor, illustrating just how personal a fight over shades of beige can get in a city known for strict rules on the look of houses.

One neighbor, Marcia Gahring, hasn't been seeing red. She's been seeing Vista Tan, Dovetail, Bone White and Tuscan Taupe and a variety of other accent colors painted on the outside of four homes in her Irvine community. It's "the browns" she called them. And she thinks they're dreadful.

The colors on display have led to an even more colorful debate. On one side is an irked group of residents in a city often characterized for its less-than-lively palette; on the other side is a home owners' board that doesn't see a problem and just wants to repaint a community that hasn't seen new colors in years.

Those modest colors incited shouting, finger wagging and accusations of conspiracy recently at a late June home owners' association meeting in the 507-home enclave of The Terrace in the University Park Village where Gahring has long lived.

Like a lot of Irvine, her neighborhood is governed by a home owners' board made up elected neighbors that ensures a uniform look to neat landscapes and tidy common areas and approves any additions to houses or new paint hues. There are about 225 associations in the city. At The Terrace, it costs each resident $200 a month in dues. It costs them more in fines or liens if they paint their houses a color not designated by the HOA.

With the funds raised through dues, the association will pay to paint the homes including the demonstration houses.

It's been some 14 to 17 years -- no one seems to know for sure -- since the houses got new colors. So Gahring, who admits she's not a paint expert, was eager to pick some new color schemes. Along with neighbors, she joined a volunteer committee that heard a pitch from Vista Paint and helped pick the colors she's since grown to loath.

"It's hard to tell from a little chip," she said of the colors that looked far different once she saw them on the walls. "They were so dreadful."

Now she and others are waging a crusade for new colors, an effort she said has been stymied by a board that heard their dissention at a well-attended town hall about the paint colors in May but then voted a week later against hiring a color expert to recommend a new set of shades.

Gahring said she doesn't want anything crazy, but she likes what she sees at newer developments, even across the street at Willow Bend. That neighborhood sports neutral colors, too, such as Barcelona Beige, Wool Skein and Believable Buff from Sherwin Williams and a fresh light green from the company's Colonial Revival line. Fresh, current but traditional colors. "That's all we're after," she said.

"We" is the group of some 60 or so residents, more than three times that if you count the number of homeowners who signed the petition that Gahring and others circulated through the neighborhood asking that their association board hire a paint color expert.

New paint and tree removal. Those are the two things that usually have a tendency to rile up residents the most, said Debbie Evans with the community's property management company and designated keeper of the peace and parliamentary procedure at meetings. And they were riled up on June 25 at the evening HOA meeting.

"This man just called me a conspirator," Vicki Reynolds, one of the four board members, said amid a clamor of voices. Reynolds moved into the neighborhood a year ago.

"I am this close to putting up a for sale sign," she told the crowd, clearly exasperated. She said she just wanted the neighborhood to be a happy place.

Another resident for some 22 years who had been to two homeowner meetings in that time, both concerning paint colors, had one request for the board: considering the million-dollar plus houses across the street, just make their houses look nice. Another acknowledged no color scheme would please everyone but having a third party choose would at least prevent the issue from becoming one that pits neighbor versus neighbor.

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